Santa Clara University Law Professor David Friedman in his garden in San Jose, Calif. A collector of medievel weapons, he shows a sudanese broadsword, on Monday, September 15, 2008.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Santa Clara University Law Professor David Friedman in his garden...

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Santa Clara University Law Professor David Friedman at home in San Jose, Calif., talking about his latest book, "Future Imperfect," which takes a provocative look at the upside consequences of technology, on Monday, September 15, 2008.

In a century-old former farmhouse in San Jose, David Friedman is a living paradox who writes about the promise and perils of futuristic technologies even as he collects medieval weapons and other artifacts from the past.

The 63-year-old Friedman, who earned a doctorate in physics but teaches law at Santa Clara University, is the author of a new book, "Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World."

As the son of the late economist Milton Friedman, he takes a laissez-faire approach to technological advances, arguing that they could lead to a range of outcomes from the beneficial extension of human life spans to the possible extinction of the species.

Rather than try to predict outcomes, he paints the future as a series of coin tosses that will depend on countless private decisions beyond human comprehension or government control.

Speaking recently at an authors' panel at the Mountain View headquarters of Google, Friedman likened technology to an unstoppable train.

"There are no brakes available. ... If it can be done, it will be done," he said at an event that was recorded and posted on YouTube. "So the interesting thing to me is not what should you stop but how do you adapt."

Later, during a 90-minute interview at his home in San Jose, Friedman challenged the conventional wisdom about which worries merit public debate and elaborated on his preference for private rather than governmental preparation for the future.

Seated in a room decorated with samurai spears, Friedman characterized global warming as "a pretty wimpy catastrophe ... a real nuisance if you live in Bangladesh or a couple of other places."

Far more dangerous, in his view, are some potential technological catastrophes - such as might occur from a runaway bioengineered virus, a self-replicating nanotech swarm or a malevolent artificial intelligence that finds a way to pull the plug on Homo sapiens.

"I've got three different technologies that could wipe out the species," said Friedman, a self-professed libertarian who is certain that neither politics nor central planning will avert a possible bad technological outcome.

"I am much more worried about the government making the wrong response and doing damage than I am about the government not protecting me," said Friedman, adding: "It's a mistake to think of the world as if there was somebody in charge. There's never been anybody in charge."

Friedman's que sera sera approach to future technologies drew a skeptical comment from Bill McKibben, an environmental author whose books such as "Deep Economy" argue for local agriculture and energy generation as alternatives to a global economy driven by technological developments.

"This is not the finest fall to be arguing against government regulation. I mean, if free markets working without adult supervision are able to so completely screw up mortgages that they melt down the financial system, you really want to let them entirely loose with oh, say, advanced nanotech?" McKibben said. "Seems to me that this is what we have governments for. Perfect freedom is great if you're perfectly isolated. If you're not - if your runaway virus is going to infect my daughter - then maybe the rest of us, i.e., our democracy, seems like maybe we might have a role to play."

"Biotechnology and nanotechnology would not have survived without the support of the government through patenting, massive research grants and failure to ... impose liability on companies for possible biological pollution." Kimbrell said, adding: "Freidman and his father would have nothing to write about if it were not for the herculean efforts of governments over the last century to buffer capitalism and its technologies."

"He teaches imaginative courses that force students to see things in a new way," she said.

Santa Clara University law school Dean Donald Polden offered an example: a course on comparative legal systems that drew examples from medieval law, from the traditions of the American Indian Cheyenne and from Islamic law, contrasting these to contemporary norms. "He is creative and imaginative," Polden said of Friedman.

Provocative would be another term for "Future Imperfect," in which Friedman lays out a tantalizing range of either/or futures - greater personal privacy and choice protected by encryption and private contracts, or a Big Brotheresque world in which surveillance technologies and databases catalog our behaviors.

"This book is not prophecy," he writes in the introduction. "My purpose is not to predict which futures we will get but to use possible futures to think about how technological change will affect us and how we can and should change our lives to adapt to it."